The Between typeface is a delicious typographic concoction: one sans-serif typeface, expertly poached, boiled and scrambled into three new and unique styles by master type chef Akira Kobayashi of Monotype.

The history of Between can be traced back to the 1990s. Kobayashi realised that many companies preferred a friendly neutral sans typefacefor their brand. He initially wanted to design a DIN-like font that had a more humanist appearance and better performance in high-volume typesetting. In the end, he created Between in three versions. While the various styles share some letterforms, they are not simply different versions of the same design. Each style has its own concept with its own character and expression. The differences are not so major as to make it a large family, hence the name “between” was borne.

Image: Monotype

It started with the one in the middle. Between 2 strikes a balance between crisp and highly legible on one hand and organic and friendly on the other. Between 1 pushes towards the more technical and modern, while Between 3 goes the other way, with a lively, handwritten feel. The variations are subtle but telling. All three share the same cap height and x-height, and many letterforms – there’s a fluidity between them. But certain characters, like core components of a dish, make all the difference. Extract the ‘e’s and ‘g’s, for example, and it’s easy to see what the key ingredients are.

Image: Monotype

Image: Monotype

Kobayashi’s unconventional approach provides the designer with a new level of flexibility. The three unique styles complement and blend perfectly with one another. So get cooking with Between 1, 2 and 3, each in eight weights plus italics, and create something eggs-traordinary.

Between™ font family is designed by Akira Kobayashi in 2016.

Prices start from SGD49 per weight. Family Pack is available at discounted price.

Monotype developed a global typeface family for Tencent, a leading provider of Internet-based services in China. Monotype Type Designer Julius Hui led the creation of the slanting, futuristic typeface which focused on creating a perfect harmony between Chinese, Japanese and Latin characters— allowing Tencent to deliver a consistent, recognizable brand voice, worldwide.

Julius Hui worked closely with Tencent on an updated logotype, giving the letters a more contemporary feel that would convey the brand’s dedication to technology and innovation. A “cutting edge” is represented literally on the entry and exit strokes throughout the typeface. The design also slants forward at an 8-10° angle, leaning into the future.

The type’s slanting style posed a particular challenge for Chinese characters – whose structure can become loose and easy-to-collapse when not drawn upright. Hui and his design team experimented with several solutions, trying different slopes, different degrees, and even creating a slanted box in which they could draw slanted Chinese characters.

Chinese is traditionally drawn completely upright. To reflect Tencent’s dedication to the future, Julius decided to create a slightly italic Chinese design that slanted forward. Optical corrections were put in place to ensure legibility in this new forward-thinking design.

With Tencent’s global mission in mind, the company also needed a Latin counterpart that would complement and work alongside the Chinese. Monotype designer Juan Villanueva oversaw the development. Villanueva started with a broad-edge pen, rewriting Chinese characters to get a better understanding of their structure. Latin and Chinese had to work together in a “true partnership”, despite operating as two very different writing systems – Chinese ideographs fit into a box, while Latin has very different constraints.

The Chinese and Latin fonts share similar entry and exit strokes. Notice the intentional “cutting edge”, a reference to Tencent’s products and brand values.

Japanese Kana were also created by abstracting strokes and shapes from the Chinese design. Monotype designer, Ryota Doi led the development of Japanese. Creating harmony between Chinese and Japanese characters is no easy task. Chinese characters are very structured and designed to fit into a box, whereas Japanese (Hiragana) ideographs have a more organic rounded shape.

Japanese Kana characters were also created to harmonize with the Chinese design. The Japanese fonts were designed by Ryota Doi.

“A typeface is an important part of conveying a brand’s voice and promise to its customers,” Monotype says. “We wanted to ensure that our voice demonstrates how technology is incubating new possibilities for social development and quality of life. This typeface echos our values.”

Designed by Akira Kobayashi and a team of ten other type designers around the world, SST brings harmony and personality to communications across cultures and touchpoints. The SST typeface was designed to be universal and timeless, with support for 93 languages and outstanding legibility at all sizes.

With the aim of creating an international font family, Monotype’s Type Director Akira Kobayashi teamed up with Sony’s Chief Art Director Hiroshige Fukuhara to design the neutral sans SST®. The team and designers around the world helped to make sure the style demands and cultural nuances of specific languages were catered for, and ensure a consistent tone across the entire family of fonts.

What started out as an exclusive corporate typeface is now available to everyone: a modern sans serif with clean structures and an organic legibility. The superfamily supports almost 100 languages with numerous font systems and in addition to Latin also offers Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Vietnamese, Japanese and Thai characters and symbols. This means SST will be your ideal partner for major international corporate projects and can convince both in print and on screen.

Image: Fontshop/Monotype

In Akira’s words, SST was created to be flexible enough to let the products or brands speak for themselves.

Designer: Akira Kobayashi

Image: Monotype

Image: Monotype

Akira feels that an attractive typeface with trendy styling might look outdated in just a couple of years. Or in another case, a type with embellished characters could instantly attract readers’ attention. Suppose one brand selects this embellished type for its advertisement. The appearance of the type or the tagline gives the brand a certain look. People in the street see it repeatedly and the type eventually becomes the brand’s tone of voice. But such type tends to leave us with a strong impression, making other brands reluctant to use the same type in the same way. In developing SST to be used for branding, he and his team knew they had to avoid this as they hoped that the type would be used for many different brands, and for many years to come.

As the name suggests, the Rollerscript font from G-TYPE designed by Nick Cooke was conceived by writing out variations of each character by hand using a roller pen before the scanning and digitising process.

Pronounced pressure points where characters start, end or join make for a very authentic hand drawn appearance which is enhanced still further through the use of over 100 standard ligatures. Character pairings like ‘tt’ or ‘gg’ in normal handwriting fonts never look natural but in Rollerscript will now automatically change as you type!Rollerscript’s handwriting credentials are given a further boost with the inclusion of multiple underlines and sketched icons, arrows and emoticons.

Developed as the Japanese version of the popular Neue Frutiger by Adrian Frutiger and Akira Kobayashi, Tazugane Gothic™ is a humanist sans with clear and legible forms.

The Tazugane Gothic typeface contains OpenType functions including proportional metrics and kerning. Like the Neue Frutiger typeface, Tazugane Gothic features ten different weights, ranging from Ultra Light to Extra Black, allowing for a broad range of applications.

By not making the individual characters too large, the balance of traditional handwriting taught in schools is preserved, producing a typeface with a distinctly human flavor that supports a sense of stability and readability.

The Reuters Picture Archive has over 13 million images available for search online, as well as a huge range of picture packages and special features that you can browse. With a network of 600 award-winning photojournalist, Reuters’s picture coverage includes: news, sports, features, business, entertainment, lifestyle and much more.

Excavators are seen during rescue operations at an industrial estate hit by a landslide in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, December 23, 2015. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

People cool off at a water park, in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, August 1, 2015. Temperature hit 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) in Nanjing on Saturday. Picture taken August 1, 2015. REUTERS/China Daily CHINA OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN CHINA TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

A giant illuminated Santa Claus is seen on the Promenade Des Anglais as part of holiday season decorations in Nice, France, December 14, 2015. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

Residents are seen as they wait for rescue helicopters at a residential area flooded by the Kinugawa river, caused by typhoon Etau, in Joso, Ibaraki prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 10, 2015. One person was missing on Thursday as 90,000 people were ordered to evacuate after rivers burst their banks in cities north of Tokyo following days of heavy rain pummelling Japan, according to local media. Mandatory credit REUTERS/Kyodo ATTENTION EDITORS – FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS. THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. IT IS DISTRIBUTED, EXACTLY AS RECEIVED BY REUTERS, AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS. MANDATORY CREDIT. JAPAN OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN JAPAN. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

A stray dog stands on a rubbish dump at the seafront in Sidon, southern Lebanon, June 9, 2012. The dump, located near schools, hospitals and apartment blocks in Lebanon’s third biggest city, has partially collapsed into the Mediterranean sea several times. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho (LEBANON – Tags: ENVIRONMENT ANIMALS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

A flock of starlings fly next to power lines over an agricultural field near the southern Israeli city of Netivot January 24, 2013. REUTERS/Amir Cohen (ISRAEL – Tags: ANIMALS ENVIRONMENT)

A passenger without pants waits for the subway train during “The No Pants Subway Ride” in Mexico City January 11, 2015. The event, the fifth organized in Mexico, is an annual flash mob and occurs in different cities around the world, according to its organisers. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido (MEXICO – Tags: TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY SOCIETY TRANSPORT)

A labourer has his dinner under his shed at a construction site of a residential complex in Hefei, Anhui province, August 1, 2012. The average home price in China’s 100 major cities edged up in July for the second straight month, reinforcing signs of a recovery in the property market even as the government seeks to spur broader economic growth, a private sector survey showed on Wednesday. Picture taken August 1, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer (CHINA – Tags: BUSINESS SOCIETY CONSTRUCTION REAL ESTATE TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

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Castellers de Vilafranca start to form a human tower called “castell” during a biannual competition in Tarragona city, Spain, October 2, 2016. REUTERS/Albert Gea

A cradle left behind by Syrian Kurdish refugees lies at the Turkish-Syrian border near the southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province September 27, 2014. Turkish troops could be used to help set up a secure zone in Syria, if there was an international agreement to establish such a haven for refugees fleeing Islamic State fighters, President Tayyip Erdogan said in comments published on Saturday. Militants still held their positions around 10 kilometres west of Kobane inside Syria, the Reuters witness said, with Kurdish positions the last line of defence between the fighters and the town. Kobane sits on a road linking north and northwestern Syria and Kurdish control of the town has prevented Islamic State fighters from consolidating their gains, although their advance has caused more than 150,000 Kurds to flee to Turkey since last week. REUTERS/Murad Sezer (TURKEY – Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST CONFLICT SOCIETY IMMIGRATION TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Zheng Feng, an amateur climber takes wedding pictures with his bride on a cliff in Jinhua, Zhejiang province, October 26, 2014. Picture taken October 26, 2014. REUTERS/China Daily (CHINA – Tags: SOCIETY TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) CHINA OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN CHINA

An aerial picture of the site of explosions at the Binhai new district, Tianjin, China, August 16, 2015. The explosions late last Wednesday in the world’s 10th-busiest port in China’s industrial northeast, forced the evacuation of thousands of people after toxic chemicals were detected in the air. More than 700 people were injured and another 70, mostly fire fighters, are still missing. The blasts devastated a large industrial site and nearby residential areas. Picture taken August 16, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer CHINA OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN CHINA TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Dancers perform on a transparent overhead water stage during a media preview and dress rehearsal for the Fuerzabruta (Brute Force) show, created by Diqui James of Argentina, in Taipei December 14, 2009. The show, which features a semi-interactive presentation form including a floating water pool above the audience, will run from December 15 to January 24. REUTERS/Nicky Loh (TAIWAN – Tags: ENTERTAINMENT SOCIETY)

Foam figures of bulls, the symbol for a positive trend at stock markets, are pictured as the curve reaches a new all time high on the German share price index DAX board at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, October 15, 2013. Germany’s DAX reached a new all time high earlier today. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach (GERMANY – Tags: ANIMALS BUSINESS)

Abdul Samad, 13, carries a part of a used car engine inside an automobile workshop in Mumbai July 10, 2012. An Indian automobile industry body on Tuesday slightly lowered its car sales growth forecast for the year ending next March, as higher costs and slower economic expansion impinge on demand. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui (INDIA – Tags: BUSINESS SOCIETY TRANSPORT)

A Qantas Boeing 737-800 plane flies through heavy rain as a storm moves towards the city of Sydney, Australia, November 6, 2015. Powerful storms swept across the city on Friday, with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology issuing a warning for severe thunderstorms with large hailstones, heavy rainfall and damaging winds, local media reported. REUTERS/David Gray TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

A Hindu devotee performs a stunt with fire during a rehearsal for the annual Rath Yatra, or chariot procession, which commemorates a journey by Hindu god Jagannath, his brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra, in specially made chariots, in Ahmedabad, India, June 26, 2016. REUTERS/Amit Dave TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

A woman pushes her Fiat 500 car as her dog sits inside, in a neighbourhood of Rome March 23, 2012. Picture taken March 23, 2012. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi (ITALY – Tags: ANIMALS SOCIETY TRANSPORT)

Fishermen use a fire to attract fish on a traditional sulfuric fire fishing” boat in New Taipei City, Taiwan June 19, 2016. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu SEARCH “FIRE FISHING” FOR THIS STORY. SEARCH “THE WIDER IMAGE” FOR ALL STORIES. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Visitors take pictures of tidal waves under the influence of Typhoon Usagi in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, September 22, 2013. According to official Xinhua news agency, China’s National Meteorological Center issued its highest alert, warning that Usagi would bring gales and downpours to southern coastal areas. REUTERS/Chance Chan (CHINA – Tags: ENVIRONMENT SOCIETY DISASTER TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) CHINA OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN CHINA

A young girl sells balloons by the Yamuna River on the last day of the ten-day-long Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Delhi, India, September 15, 2016. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

A Hindu devotee stands in the waters of river Ganges to offer prayers to Sun god at dawn in Varanasi, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh January 12, 2013. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui (INDIA – Tags: SOCIETY RELIGION TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

A woman looks on as Mount Sinabung spews ash, as pictured from Sibintun village in Karo district, Indonesia’s north Sumatra province November 18, 2013. Mount Sinabung continued to spew volcanic ash throwing a plume 8,000 meters into the atmosphere on Monday as thousands of residents remained in temporary shelters fearful of more eruptions, according to local media. REUTERS/Roni Bintang (INDONESIA – Tags: DISASTER ENVIRONMENT TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

The IAF Aerobatic Team flying IAI Tzukit jet aircraft create a “heart” during a ceremony for graduating Israeli Air Force pilots at Hatzerim Air Base, June 28, 2010. REUTERS/Baz Ratner (ISRAEL – Tags: MILITARY IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Uprooted trees are pictured after a tornado hit Vilonia, Arkansas April 28, 2014. On a second day of ferocious storms that have claimed at least 21 lives in the southern United States, a tornado tore through the Mississippi town of Tupelo on Monday destroying homes and businesses, according to witnesses and emergency officials. Most of the deaths from the severe storm system occurred on Sunday when tornadoes tossed cars like toys in Arkansas and other states. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri (UNITED STATES – Tags: DISASTER ENVIRONMENT)

Retiree Madeline Barcelo swims at the beach with her granddaughter in Varadero, Cuba, August 26, 2015. Cubans are flocking to the beach in record numbers before a possible end to the U.S. travel ban that would open the gates to American tourists and bump up prices. Picture taken August 26, 2015. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

A Spanish volunteer life guard guides Afghan migrants in an overcrowded raft as they arrive at a beach during a rainstorm on the Greek island of Lesbos October 24, 2015. Over half a million refugees and migrants have arrived by sea in Greece this year and the rate of arrivals is rising, in a rush to beat the onset of freezing winter, the United Nations said. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

2016 Rio Olympics – Swimming – Final – Women’s 800m Freestyle Final – Olympic Aquatics Stadium – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 12/08/2016. Katie Ledecky (USA) of USA competes on her way to winning the gold and setting a new world record. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS.

People cool off in misters at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California April 12, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

A visitor to the Sydney Botanical Garden’s inaugural contribution to the Vivid Sydney light festival takes a picture of the ‘Cathedral of Light’ during a preview of the annual interactive light installation and projection event around Sydney, Australia May 25, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Reed TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

People walk through Eshash el-Sudan slum in the Dokki neighbourhood of Giza, south of Cairo, Egypt September 2, 2015. Residents of the slum clashed with police in late August, when about 50 ramshackle huts were destroyed and at least 20 people were injured by teargas, local media reported, as authorities attempt to clear the area and rehouse residents. The slum dwellers, some of whom have called Eshash el-Sudan home for 50 years, say there are not enough apartments built nearby to house them. The residents of the slum eke out a living by disposing of rubbish or baking bread. Schooling is too expensive for most of their children, who play with salvaged rubbish amid shacks made out of discarded wood and leather. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY SEARCH “ESHASH EL-SUDAN” FOR ALL PICTURES

Skyscrapers Shanghai World Financial Center (R) and Jin Mao Tower are seen during heavy rain at the financial district of Pudong in Shanghai May 15, 2015. REUTERS/Aly Song TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

A flamingo and flamingo chicks are seen in a corral before being fitted with identity rings at dawn at a lagoon in the Fuente de Piedra natural reserve, in Fuente de Piedra, near Malaga, southern Spain, August 8, 2015. Around 600 flamingo chicks were tagged and measured before being placed in the lagoon, one of the largest colonies of flamingos in Europe, according to authorities of the natural reserve. REUTERS/Jon Nazca TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

A picture of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung decorates a building in the capital Pyongyang early in this October 5, 2011 file photo. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/Files (NORTH KOREA – Tags: CITYSCAPE SOCIETY TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS PICTURE IS PART OF PACKAGE ’30 YEARS OF REUTERS PICTURES’ TO FIND ALL 56 IMAGES SEARCH ’30 YEARS’

The moon illuminates the snow-covered Concordia, the confluence of the Baltoro and Godwin-Austen glaciers, near the world’s second highest mountain the K2 (8,000 meters) in the Karakoram mountain range in Pakistan September 6, 2014. While other parts of Pakistan and northern India were flooded, Concordia in the Karakoram mountain range was covered with a seasonally unusual amount of snow. Geographically, Pakistan is a climbers paradise. It rivals Nepal for the number of peaks over 7,000 meters and is home to the world’s second tallest mountain, K2, as well as four of the world’s 14 summits higher than 8,000 meters. In more peaceful times, northern Pakistan’s unspoilt beauty was a major tourist draw but the potentially lucrative industry has been blighted by years of violence. The number of expeditions has dwindled, wrecking communities dependant on climbing for income and starving Pakistan’s suffering economy of much-needed dollars. Picture taken September 6, 2014. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay (PAKISTAN – Tags: ENVIRONMENT SOCIETY TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY TRAVEL) ATTENTION EDITORS – PICTURE 27 OF 32 FOR WIDER IMAGE STORY ‘K2 – THE SAVAGE MOUNTAIN’ SEARCH ‘RATTAY K2’ FOR ALL IMAGES

Cats crowd the harbour on Aoshima Island in the Ehime prefecture in southern Japan February 25, 2015. An army of cats rules the remote island in southern Japan, curling up in abandoned houses or strutting about in a fishing village that is overrun with felines outnumbering humans six to one. Picture taken February 25, 2015. To match story JAPAN-CATS/ REUTERS/Thomas Peter (JAPAN – Tags: SOCIETY ANIMALS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY TRAVEL)

ATTENTION EDITORS – 14 OF 21 PICTURES TO MATCH PACKAGE ‘WORLD POPULATION – SEVEN BILLION’ – TO FIND ALL PICTURES SEARCH ‘POPULATION-BABY/’ People gather to get water from a huge well in the village of Natwarghad in the western Indian state of Gujarat, in this file picture taken June 1, 2003. The worlds population will reach seven billion on 31 October 2011, according to projections by the United Nations, which says this global milestone presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the planet. While more people are living longer and healthier lives, says the U.N., gaps between rich and poor are widening and more people than ever are vulnerable to food insecurity and water shortages. REUTERS/Amit Dave/Files (INDIA DAY – Tags: HEALTH SOCIETY TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

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Monotype’s Ying Hei™ is a new Chinese sans serif typeface family designed and built for performance and elegance on screen and in print. It is available in five weights covering text and display sizes, with versions for Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

M Ying Hei was designed to the highest standards by the Monotype Hong Kong team, led by Kenneth Kwok and Robin Hui. It features ample inter-character spacing, open shapes, varying proportions and unambiguous forms to ensure consistent and optimal legibility in a range of challenging usage environments. M Ying Hei conveys a professional, rational and efficient image for any document. With a minimal and contemporary design, M Ying Hei is free from extraneous details, with a well-considered skeleton and refined stoke designs. This allows it to help readers to quickly recognise a message, and improve reading efficiency.

Perfect companion for Neue Helvetica
For the Latin characters, M Ying Hei features the famous Neue Helvetica® typeface integrated in a refined and thoughtful manner. M Ying Hei’s flexible design can also be used with a variety of other popular Latin san serif typefaces including Avenir® Next, Neue Frutiger®, and Univers® Next typefaces among others.